Toyota is putting serious efforts to pull itself into the smart-car traffic

In present era every car firm is chasing after smart-car technology, dispensing millions of dollars on this so called future of the cars. Smart cars are intended for the comfort of people. For instance if you are busy on the phone while driving a car just push self-driving car button and boom! Problem solved, the car will automatically drive you to your selected destination. Many tech and automaker firms have announced their ongoing self-driving car projects.

Toyota Motor Corp (ADR) (NYSE:TM), one of the bigger fish in automaker industry, has announced at a press conference in Palo Alto on Friday that it is investing $50 million on artificial intelligence system of cars. Further the firm also announced its partnership with Stanford and MIT to lend a hand in R&D on self-driving vehicles. Dr. Gill Pratt, who supervises the Robotics Challenge at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will take the charge of the project.

Dr. Pratt’s hiring also seems to indicate Toyota is taking this project seriously. He says the research is “targeted at improving the ability of intelligent vehicle technologies to recognize objects around the vehicle in diverse environments, provide elevated judgment of surrounding conditions, and safely collaborate with vehicle occupants, other vehicles, and pedestrians.”

Several other renowned firms have also dedicated their full attention to self-driving cars. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Uber, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are keen to make cars much better, thus trying to make error-less smart car system for eliminating hazards as such caused by human errors. Google’s self-driving car is in testing phase. Apple has also announced to launch its car in next three to four years. Among these, other car makers including Ford, Volvo and Tesla have also shed light on their plans of manufacturing self-driving cars.

The primary goal of this research, according to Toyota’s Senior Managing Officer Kiyotaka Ise, is to help “eliminate traffic casualties,” especially among the elderly.

An automated-car will be highly preferable in future as there is likely no chance that the car will bump into any accident on account of highly advanced smart-system. This was proved by the Google’s self-driving cars whose experiments on the self-driving cars are successful.

I handle much of news coverage for tech stocks, and occasionally cover companies in different sectors. In the past, I've written for other financial sites and published independent investment research, primarily on tech companies. I have a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University. I'm based out of San Diego, but grew up in Southern New Jersey. I play basketball and tennis in my spare time, am a long-time (and long-suffering) fan of Philadelphia's sports teams, and alternate daily between using an iPad Air, a Galaxy Note 3, and one or two Windows PCs.